


made to be apart

by gamb



Series: Fictober 2018 [1]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: F/F, Gen, Jealousy, Possibly Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 09:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamb/pseuds/gamb
Summary: Chandra goes searching for Nissa.





	made to be apart

It had been foolish, perhaps, to forego her usual boots and leathers for sandals and loose shorts, but Amonkhet was hot, even by her standards, and if Chandra had expected to come across any trouble, it was trouble in the form of a swarm of eminently-flammable sun-baked zombies, not one small snake that let go of her leg and slithered away before she'd fully realized what the sudden sharp pain in her leg _was_. What were the chances of planeswalking directly on top of a snake in the middle of Amonkhet's wastelands, anyway?  There weren't even _plants_ around here.

"Well, fuck," Chandra huffed after she finished shrieking imprecations in the direction the snake had gone. Her ankle tingled as if it were falling asleep, probably a sign the damn thing was venomous. Kaladesh had no lack of vipers, even in the cities, and so Chandra had grown up listening to her mother's warnings to watch where she stepped and keep her shoes on, but the only advice she'd gotten about what to do if she _was_ bitten was "tell an adult". There was no adult for Chandra to tell--other than herself, of course, but she was already well-apprised of the situation.

She bent at an awkward angle, trying to get a good look at the back of her ankle, then looked around at the sand dunes. She saw little; she stood at the bottom of a valley on a border between dunes triple her height and a stretch of worn, sand-blasted stone that broke in steep layers like steps and climbed even higher than the dunes. If Jace were to be believed (and Chandra still wasn't sure she believed him) Nissa was nearby, and Chandra wagered that Nissa knew a thing or two about snakebites, but the cold-burn sensation crawling up her leg suggested time to search might be a luxury she couldn't afford. Would it perhaps be better to try to planeswalk back to Ravnica and find Ajani?

The need to make a decision was obviated by a head and shoulders appearing at the top of the rock-steps. Not Nissa, Chandra noted, but the face was familiar nonetheless. The woman they'd rescued from the weird coffin-thing...what was her name?

"Hey!" Chandra called in lieu of the name she couldn't remember. "You know anything about snakes? Or snake _bites_?"

The woman flew down the stone steps with a speed and surefootedness that must have been magical and skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. She looked tired and smaller than she had been, bones showing too obviously at her cheeks and collar. Chandra felt a pang of guilt; the Gatewatch had been so busy licking their own wounds after the fight with Bolas that they hadn't thought to see how the survivors of Naktamun had fared. She hadn't honestly thought there could _be_ survivors in this endless desert.

"You were with Nissa at the Hours," the woman stated. "One of the trespassers." Her expression suggested that she didn't remember Chandra's name anymore than Chandra remembered hers, and Chandra felt slightly better about her own forgetfulness.

"Yeah, sorry to keep trespassing. Um--I need to find her. There was this snake--"

The other woman looked away for a moment, as if thinking, and nodded. "I can take you. Can you walk?"

"Kind of?" It felt like ice water was being poured down her leg and digging its way into all the crevices that made up her knee and ankle, but they still bent. She took a wincing step.

"Here." The woman offered her arm for Chandra to lean on, and they started up the stone. Her leg not behaving as she was used to, Chandra slipped halfway up and skinned her knee, after which the other woman picked her up and carried her, bridal-style, the rest of the way. Even carrying Chandra, even apparently half-starved, the woman jogged up the steps quicker than Chandra thought she would be able to unencumbered.

Chandra gasped as she saw the top of the bluff.  A small jungle stood in the middle of the desert.  Trees, skinny and only just taller than a tall man, rose out of cracks in the rocks. Vines crawled up the twisted trunks and small bushes huddled in the scant shade offered by the newborn canopy.  Nissa's work, surely.  A structure that might have once have been a grand temple but was now an oversized, misshapen lump of broken brown-grey stone towered over it all. A handful of people worked around the trees, casting growth-encouraging magics. And among them--

Were Chandra asked to list the ten most likely places Nissa would have gone after leaving the Gatewatch, she _might_ have listed Amonkhet, but only because she couldn't truthfully list more than one. Nissa _belonged_ to Zendikar, in a way Chandra still struggled to understand, and the idea that she may have gone elsewhere seemed so wrong that even with proof standing before her, Chandra felt there must be some mistake. Nissa had been so reluctant to leave Zendikar in the beginning, confessing she'd barely spent any time at all on other worlds, and on Ravnica she seemed out-of-place and off-balance. But here Nissa was, guiding a young man's hands as he cast a spell and smiling in delight as a warm green glow strengthened around the tree's trunk.

Nissa, with elven hearing, noticed the strange pair coming towards the grove first. Had Chandra's cheeks not already been flushed from heat and pain, they would have reddened at Nissa's shocked expression. This was not the way Chandra had envisioned their reunion--covered in flop sweat, being carried by _I-swear-I'll-remember-your-name_ , grimacing at the pain that had now reached her hip, blood trickling down her leg from her skinned knee.

The poison-master was sent for. A boy was told to fetch a jug of water. Chandra was set down at the base of a tree, and Nissa came to kneel beside her.

"Hi," Chandra said as Nissa approached.  She immediately felt dumb for saying it. "Sorry to barge in like this."

"Hello," Nissa returned with a smile. "I did not expect to see you here." She pulled a leaf from a nearby bush and placed it over Chandra's scraped knee, then covered it with her hand. A warmth like sunlight spread from beneath her cupped palm, and Chandra could feel the almost-itching sensation of skin scarring over magically. She tensed to prevent herself from scratching.

"Same," Chandra laughed. "I'm gonna have to apologize to Jace. I didn't believe him when he said this is where you were. Do you know how to cure a snakebite?"

Nissa didn't, but Hapatra (Chandra _did_ remember her name) appeared soon thereafter with a bowl of clear but sludgy liquid that, with a spell, pulled the venom from Chandra's veins. The liquid turned brownish, and Hapatra emptied the bowl on the rocks, well clear of the trees.

Chandra thanked her, then leaned back against the tree trunk and stretched out her leg, which felt as if it were about to cramp.

"So, how are you?" Chandra asked Nissa.  Hapatra and the group of workers stood in a group off to the side, eager to see what the newcomer had to say, but _I-still-can't-remember_ came to squat next to Nissa.

"Hmm?"  Nissa seemed surprised by the question. "I am fine. You mentioned Jace--has he returned?"

"Yeah, he came back like a month ago. He got trapped on this island. Long story." They spent a few minutes swapping news, and the group of onlookers dwindled as it seemed nothing of interest to their own lives would be said.

"If I may--why did you come here?" Nissa asked finally. Her tone was curious, not accusing, but even still Chandra clenched her fists nervously.

_Why? Because I needed to leave, for a while. Because it hasn't stopped raining for a month. Because Liliana left us. Because Gideon's always off by himself 'thinking' and Jace is going to murder the next person who tells him that Ravnica's going to be all right. Because I met Jaya Ballard and she's kind of a bitch. Because Teferi treats me like I'm stupid and Ajani treats me like I'm made out of china and Karn treats me like a curiosity. Because none of this is turning out how I thought it would. Because things were better when it was just you and me and Jace and Gideon, even though the world was ending and we all almost died. Because Jace's house is crammed full of people and I still feel alone._

"Because I missed you, of course." Chandra tried to make a friendly smile. " I wanted to see how you were doing. It's been a few months, you know."

"Oh," Nissa said. "I thought perhaps Gideon sent you."

"No." _Gideon?_ "He--I didn't even ask him."

"I am surprised he has not tried to convince me to return," Nissa said, and Chandra couldn't tell if Nissa thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.

"I mean--do yo want to? Jace and Gids thought that if you wanted to come back, you would, but like--I was thinking maybe you were afraid we'd be upset, or something. We're not!" Chandra had forgotten how _attentive_ a listener Nissa was, and the focus of Nissa's gaze, friendly though it was, was starting to unnerve her, throw her off the script she'd only half-imagined before coming here. "Sorry, I don't mean to pressure--"

"It's alright," Nissa soothed with a small smile. "I am happy to see you as well. And I am glad there are no hard feelings."

"Oh. I'm--that's good. I--I wasn't sure." Chandra picked up a handful of sand and watched it trickle out, trying to rebalance herself. Why was she so awkward when it came to Nissa? She'd had crushes before, and she'd made an ass of herself with those too, but with Nissa it seemed like every single sentence she uttered turned into an needy, uncertain whine.

"You didn't say if you wanted to. Come back, that is."   Chandra remarked.  The last grains of sand fell out of her hand, and she gathered another handful, trying to make it seem as if Nissa's answer didn't matter to her. As if she was asking if Nissa would like a cup of water, or to come inside out of the heat, or something equally innocuous.

"I meant what I said when I left," Nissa replied after a pause, each word spoken slowly, carefully. "Liliana corrupted our purpose. It concerns me that no one noticed but me."

"Yeah, well..." Chandra faltered, searching for a rebuttal and failing to find one. She picked up more sand and settled for truth. "You were right. Liliana's gone, and nobody knows where she went. We killed her last demon and _poof_." She mimed a popping bubble with her hands, scattering sand across her legs.

"Still though," Chandra continued as she brushed the sand from her legs, an argument occurring to her at last. "Even if it was for the wrong reasons, killing a bunch of demons is a good thing. We made things better."

Nissa's expression flattened and her ears pulled back. "I didn't swear an oath to kill demons."

"I know. I'm just saying it wasn't _all_ bad. And we're not doing that anymore anyways. I mean, we couldn't: they're all dead and Liliana ran off!" Chandra exclaimed, and then deflated as Nissa's expression darkened. She hadn't said the right thing. She tried to rally. "Look, we screwed up. Me-and-Gideon-and-Jace _we_ , not you-and-me _we_. We probably owe you an apology, so: I'm sorry we didn't listen. And we could use you back, if you want."   _I need you back_.

"This world has suffered greatly, but it still has life in it," Nissa said quietly. "I've found a world I can _help_. People I can teach. That's what I swore to do on Zendikar. That's what I _want_ to do." She twisted her hands together and looked away. "It's the work should have been doing all along."

"You could help by... _helping_...against Bolas too," Chandra countered, trying to keep the frustration from her voice. "He's the one who did all this in the first place, and now he's going to do it to Ravnica too. We could use you."

"I don't mean to be cruel," Nissa started. "But there are many mages living on Ravnica, and many of them are more talented than I am. Ravnica has plenty of defenders. There are few here who can help Amonkhet."

"Don't stay just for us," the other woman piped up, leaning over to lay a hand on Nissa's shoulder. Nissa didn't flinch away, as Chandra had seen her do a hundred times when it had been her or Gideon doing it, and her throat tightened. "Your help is appreciated, but we can take care of ourselves, if need be."

"I know, Samut," Nissa said, and the glee of finally knowing the other woman's name again--without having to be awkward and _ask_ \--was tempered by the fond look on Nissa's face. "I don't stay just for you. This plane is sick, and has been so for such a long time, before Bolas ever came here. But I think, with time, it can heal."

_Just for you_. Chandra wondered what that meant, then quickly decided she didn't want to know after all. She flung her latest handful of sand against the ground, and felt a petty satisfaction when Nissa and Samut flinched at the sudden sharp sound.

"If you need help, I'd be glad to stand against Bolas. I owe him for a few things," Samut offered tightly with a scowl, her dark eyes hooded.

"Be glad to have to have you, "Chandra said, although suddenly she wasn't. "But it's on another world. You can't get there."

"I can. I learned how to planeswalk, like you two," Samut said. Her hand gripped the joined handles of her swords. "Just show me the way."

"Samut would be a valuable ally," Nissa agreed.

_She's not you._

"In that case, welcome aboard." Chandra tried to sound cheerful. It wasn't Samut's fault; there was no "fault" at all, really. She was being silly.  Allies should always be welcome, even when they weren't the ones you wanted and your best friend looked at them in a way you'd always hoped they'd look at you.  Had Nissa ever looked at her so fondly? She must have.

Chandra made a last-ditch attempt. "You sure you don't want to come too, Nissa?  Just to have a little reunion?"

Nissa shook her head. "There's still work here, and I am the only one who can do it. When I am done, perhaps."

"What if I stayed?" Chandra asked, swallowing down a pang in her chest that might have been residual venom, or may have been something else entirely. Gideon would be upset if she left--again--but he'd get over it. Hell, he'd been so distant lately he might not even notice she was gone.

"I'm sure you'd be welcome to stay. But your talents would be wasted here."

"Yeah, probably," Chandra agreed sourly. _You'll burn their grove down, like that village and Kephalai and Yavimaya_. No, that wasn't fair--Nissa wasn't accusing her. Nissa was stating simple facts, like she always did. It wasn't her fault Chandra's talents bent toward destruction. She was right--Ravnica could use her talents more than Amonkhet could, although Chandra couldn't help but note that Ravnica had at least as many pyromancers as it did nature mages. Ravnica didn't _need_ her anymore than it needed Nissa. She could stay.

She _could_.

\---

Ravnica was damp and dim and dismal, the kind of weather you got a cold from simply by _thinking_ of stepping outside, and had been for weeks. Chandra scowled at the rain-streaked window as she appeared in Jace's library. Samut coalesced a beat later and looked around at the high ceiling and laden shelves in awe.

"You're back," Jace noted from the table where he sat facing away from them before a spread of open books, . He turned in his chair towards them. "And you brought-- _not_ Nissa."

"You remember Samut, yeah? Samut's a planeswalker now. Samut wants to help kick a dragon's ass," Chandra declared with false joviality. "Samut, you remember Jace. Jace is organizing the dragon ass-kicking. I'm sure you guys want to catch up." She stalked from the room, kicking aside a chair that blocked her way.

The thought that Nissa wouldn't come back hadn't crossed Chandra's mind until she was stepping into the aether with Samut at her back instead of Nissa. That she would choose not to stay herself was similarly surprising, and yet here she was.

"Our paths have diverged," Nissa had said, reaching out to catch Chandra wrist just before Chandra had left. "But we won't be apart forever."

_I have a job, and so does she._

It wasn't enough, but there was nothing else it could be.

**Author's Note:**

> For Fictober 2018 day #1 "poisonous". Yes, I know snakes are not poisonous.
> 
> This was supposed to be much shorter.


End file.
